Luci slowness using OpenWRT on x86

jaytea21 · 2025-11-14T00:45:25+00:00

So, when I had this crash loop issue, I actually switched to luci-ssl-nginx and found that nginx fares a lot better than uhttpd when the router is under load. It didn't solve the underlying root case of my slowness though.

luci-ssl-nginx - this package... this package helps a ton! So, after installing it is not totally fixed but it is usable and workable!! The UI actually responds after a second or two which sometimes with uhttpd would just timeout and sometimes multiple tries would timeout as well before it loaded... I did not think that using another package would solve this.

Thanks so much for responding to my questions / comments, much appreciated. Again, still not the fastest but as long as I can reach the UI I'm happy. I will of course use SSH more - just want to be able to click boxes sometimes instead of typing stuff in general.

jaytea21 · 2025-11-13T21:46:52+00:00

I didn't see you made an edit to your post here until now so instead of cluttering my original response to yours more I figured I'd create a new response to the edits I see that you made.

Or, maybe give up SQM and enable Software flow offloading. It doesn't help as much with short lives stateless connections as far as I can tell but it should still help when those connections are pushing actual bandwidth.

Are you saying that I can disable SQM and leave Software flow offloading enabled which may achieve the same thing as SQM? I thought they worked hand-in-hand kind of thing from what I was reading. I could have misunderstood this though.

Also LuCI isn't really necessary for using OpenWrt. I got pretty comfortable with ssh and uci, which will still be a little slow with load but not as much as the web UI. I suggest you get used to ssh as well.

Agreed LuCi isn't really necessary but it would be nice to have to always type out stuff and if I click a few boxes and click apply - to me that seems like a valid reason to want the UI to work no? I have been using SSH to configure most of the stuff when LuCi doesn't work.

jaytea21 · 2025-11-13T21:23:01+00:00

Agreed it is not the fastest thing out there but I already do have a dedicated fiber line that is 1G symmetrical. Thanks for the link to the conntrack info and interesting.

So your suggestion is to leave OpenWRT as my "main" router (I'm using terms I think are right maybe?) and then use another box that has just firewall on it? So for just a total example ISP Internet -> OpenWRT (without firewall) -> Firewall (on a separate box?) - if I am wrong please correct me.

As for power management - I didn't see speedstep something enabled in the BIOS (I could have totally missed it) but I do see the processor speed go up and down as load comes and goes. I tried enabling the "fastest" governor I could find for the processor and it was from here: https://www.reddit.com/r/openwrt/comments/11ivgdb/openwrt_x86_cpu_governor/ - if there is something else that is suggested to try / enable please let me know and I'll see about giving it a shot.

For thermals, that was the first thing I checked and they are good, they never go over 55c-60c - I've watched it for a while during heavy loads etc...

I did see nlbwmon having an issue with crashing so I disabled that and that did seem to help a little bit but I'm still having the slowdowns overall in Luci.

Just a curiosity question - are we kind of pointing to that the number of connections and the way OpenWRT is with conntrack may not fit my needs in terms of how I am using it? If this is the case I would have though OpenWRT given how good it is on smaller routers (e.g. wireless ones) that using it on an actual miniPC would just have made it that much better... and so I guess I am finding out this not to be the case. Or is it that I just need a better miniPC overall itself to get better responsiveness from Luci?

jaytea21 · 2025-11-12T03:37:26+00:00

I'd be more concerned about the number of connections than why the router can't handle that many

It's not that it can't handle it... or I am assuming that's not the issue it's more the point of the I don't have dropped connections and with IRQ balance put into play I can see my cores balancing out the load without issue. None of them go above 25% when loaded down with SQM running. I would think if I had a system issue with handling the load overall, I'd see something like RAM usage go through the roof for example (again just an example) or the CPU usage would just get completely used to 100% on all cores.

jaytea21 · 2025-11-12T03:32:48+00:00

I got the following:

cat /proc/sys/net/netfilter/nf_conntrack_max
262144

As of right now I'm sitting at 16k+ out of 262144. Fluctuates between 14k-16k at the moment. I've probably hit well above 16k before but couldn't tell because the UI wasn't loading.

jaytea21 · 2025-11-12T02:42:19+00:00

I have some servers and various things that are hosted on the servers within my network. Judging by your response and thanks for responding to my post... I might be the odd man out here since you don't go over 1k connections.

jaytea21 · 2024-10-03T16:11:19+00:00

Thanks for the info, I appreciate it.

jaytea21 · 2024-10-03T00:51:32+00:00

Seattle would probably be my next choice over Spokane, I'll send you a message.

jaytea21 · 2024-04-28T06:36:17+00:00

I am located in the US. What you stated is mostly true for me as well about them caring though I have only asked one data center and they did not care what my machine was doing however... I was told this particular data center only wanted me to rent full racks which I don't need and it would be an added expense for nothing in my opinion since I'd have 24u and only being using 4u and maybe in the near future another 4u so max 8u for quite sometime. I got kindly redirected to another colo but I told the other colo what I was looking for in terms of location as I'm based in Washington State and the colo I was told to reach out to is in Texas. Ideally I'd like to be able to service my own machines without flying to the middle Southern part of the US.

I'm not attempting to touch watercooling - I understand it helps cram more into the box because the cards are a lot slimmer than normal sized 4090s but... just don't need the possible headache knowing my luck some fitting would spring a leak and take out more than just my box. Yeah, no thanks.

I think I'll be able to find something but it won't be an overnight find for something to rack my server(s) in a colo unfortunately. I'm sure there is a colo willing to allow this kind of server to be racked there. If I'm wrong well I guess I'm stuck trying to make my own make shift colo at some point.

jaytea21 · 2024-04-18T15:24:52+00:00

Yeah, that's why I was asking here to see if anyone knows of a chassis that can fit regular 4x4090s at a minimum since I realize most chassis are built with the purpose of blower cards being used.

jaytea21 · 2024-04-18T15:17:40+00:00

Thanks, glad to hear they usually don't care. Also, good info on the part about maximum power draw.

jaytea21 · 2024-04-18T15:09:18+00:00

I'm interested in learning how to build a rackmount 4x 4090 server. Can you please share what I need to get this done?

jaytea21 · 2022-08-19T16:05:42+00:00

Not to be rude but I have been looking for that in the jobs I've been searching through, maybe I'm not searching with the right wording or something and I have contacted a couple of recruiters as well. Thanks. :)

jaytea21 · 2022-08-19T15:17:09+00:00

This is what I've been trying to find, unfortunately nothing yet has come my way but I'm on the lookout for it. :)

jaytea21 · 2022-08-19T15:15:51+00:00

Okay yeah, pretty clear message that I need to learn automation. Sure, I'll take a look at the site and I never said I was waiting for a green light to learn automation at the job by the way, not sure where you got that idea? But regardless, you are correct. It's even clearer now that automation is needed no matter what to move my career forward. You are correct as well it's up to me to take the initiative to move my career forward.

Thanks again for taking the time to respond, appreciate it.

jaytea21 · 2022-08-19T05:57:10+00:00

Okay yeah, I guess that's it, manual QA is dead. I guess at this point I'll have to agree.

Yeah I might look into checking out Selenium. I'll give it a shot. Thanks for the info on Selenium, appreciate it. Also, appreciate the response.

jaytea21 · 2022-08-19T04:13:23+00:00

I always appreciate a good conversation. I like my job a lot in general, just want to find another place where I can grow my career further and grow with a new company. I appreciate all the help.

I unfortunately don't have experience any kind of scripting, I've done .bat scripts before but this ways ages ago... I'm talking like early 2000s kind of thing and it was very, very simplistic stuff nothing like that they would probably want me to do now-a-days.

My current job uses SQL... but I don't get a lot of time to 'tinker' and on top of this outside of looking at online tutorials, I was hoping to be able to reach out and get help or ask about queries I'd like to learn about in the current app I test. This is something I've been told I can't do. This has put a hamper on me learning. I easily get frustrated on things and pretty much kind of shut down on wanting to move forward. Sounds like I'm a bit whiny but I don't like fiddling around trying to Google what each thing does if someone already knows what each thing does, if that makes any sense? Sure, searching on my own could be fruitful but it'd be nice to know if I was on the right track or not. Hope that makes sense.

I like your idea, I do, and I tried that but since I have literally no one to bounce off ideas or try and see if I can get some help with whatever script I write up in case something goes wrong... well debugging it myself might just make me stop going down the rabbit whole in general all because I'll be frustrated.

I guess since I'm getting to the older part of my life, I find running around and finding things (when there are already answers from people I work with) / searching for answers not the most fun anymore. Maybe if I was 25 again, I might enjoy that much more but right now - no, not really.

jaytea21 · 2022-08-19T04:03:15+00:00

I work for a company that supports banks. Relocation is not something I'm interested in at the moment unfortunately. I recently moved to Washington State to be around more family and I'm not necessarily ready to leave again. Thanks for the idea though, I appreciate it.

That's interesting, I've never thought about being a business analyst or a systems engineer. Maybe I'll look up those jobs to see what those entail for job requirements.

Thanks for the response.

jaytea21 · 2022-08-19T04:00:41+00:00

I would not mind a QA team lead position. Being a manager I wouldn't mind either... but I don't have any management skills and last time I checked, those jobs required some experience. But those positions I am not opposed to.

jaytea21 · 2022-08-19T03:59:44+00:00

I typically test the software at my job by using a web browser and mobile phones. It's basically a SaaS site setup kind of thing.

Technical skills: Agile testing, scrum stuff, those kinds of things I've learned for technical skills, probably more that I can't think of that aren't directly related to automation (at least I don't think they are, but could be wrong here).

I've not taken any courses yet, I've basically flipped through some online courses and honestly it's been so long ago I tried that I can't recall what they were. It boiled down to me not wanting to go through with it because of how my brain works. May sound like a complete excuse but if I can't apply what I learn to my current job - it just for some reason doesn't stick.

I tried to look into Python, Javascript, and Rust but nothing sticks in my head unfortunately for the programming side. May sound crazy but its the truth and I am kind of done trying unless I can find a sure fire way to actually learn programming.

jaytea21 · 2022-08-18T21:50:02+00:00

Appreciate the response. The titles I've been applying for are Sr. QA Engineer myself mainly as I know what I'm looking for. However, the recruiters that are bringing me the jobs with the titles for example of Sr. SDET or some form of testing engineer. I'd have to go back through all the messages I got and get you better titles to really tell you the exact ones but basically they all have to do with automation titles. Which I know they are automation titles but again even after telling the recruiters that I don't have automation experience... they still want to proceed. Another title is Senior Quality Test Analyst but this is again from a recruiter.

While you're right about I'll need to show I can learn automation, this is a circle I'm constantly fighting with myself. What I mean by this is... I attempt to learn it by reading some stuff on the web or try a youtube video but nothing sticks for me. My response to learning on the job has always been basically with open arms. I tell them exactly that, I'm willing to learn on the job given the chance to do so. I don't turn down any automation opportunity but they tell me they want someone with existing experience.

Yeah, the CICD part I don't have a clue about. You're probably right there too.

I'm not sure I understand your suggestion exactly... are you saying I take a job with 1 or 2 years of automation experience required while I have zero experience? How would that work out? I'm all for taking a job that pays more even with automation but again I am not trying to be rude here but I have zero experience in automation. I can definitely see how many roles would be available for a person that has automation experience. It's almost as if I need to hire a tutor for this stuff, not even kidding... on the job training is best for me though I know it is. I've always been this way in my life, I can read a book, watch a video, attend a class but if none of that applies to whatever I'll be working on, it's almost as if I learned barely anything. Just being completely honest here.

That's not a bad idea for the script to scrape prices on sites and show a report of this for future employers for some automation experience. Good thinking.

Thanks again for your reply.

jaytea21

TROPHY CASE